Be Kind To My Mistakes
by Thyme In Her Eyes
Summary: As the world is left to pick up the pieces, Cloud embarks on an uneasy adventure of psychological pilgrimage and finds an unexpected companion... [Cloud x Yuffie]


Be Kind To My Mistakes  
  
Author's Note: Right, then. A Cloud/Yuffie 'fic. And a multi-chapter one at that! Not sure what was going through my mind when I thought this up - either brilliance or idiocy, I reckon. I blame peer pressure. But please try to give this the time of day. I suppose I should note that this *isn't* going to be a love for the ages or any kind of full-blown romance, so if you're looking for big declarations of undying love and devotion, you're in the wrong place. I see Cloud and Yuffie as possibly having a friends-with- benefits relationship on an adventure and that's exactly the kind of avenue I want to explore. Besides, I think Cloud could do with it psychologically. And of course, if he's going to be madly in love with a girl, then in my book, it has to be Aeris. On the technical side, this 'fic is based about two years after the events of Final Fantasy VII, okay? Also, I own a copy of the game whilst Square holds the rights to it, ok? And please, because I'm such a lovely person, will you please give me a review?  
  
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BE KIND TO MY MISTAKES  
  
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Prologue  
  
*  
  
It was a drizzly day. Not stormy or flooded with heavy, bitter rain or warm and bright with waves of sunshine against rolling white clouds making the day awash with gold. Nothing about the day - negative or positive - marked the occasion. It was just a drizzly day, like any other. Just your average day. This was how Cloud Strife liked it.  
  
It had its own muted beauty, yes; the skies were thick with a thousand deepened shades of grey and purple rolling against each other, making the green hills of the surroundings seem somehow radiant against the skies of lead. It had just been raining. Of course, on days like these, it seemed to be raining every twenty minutes or so but it was only ever light and half- hearted rainfall. It was the newly-fallen rain that gave the day its glory: it made the grass damp and everything green and natural glistened with a brilliant shine of wetness and arrow-shots of stark sunlight, strengthening the intensity of the colour beyond what appeared natural. It looked more like wet paint than the thick greens of the countryside hills.  
  
It was, in its own way, beautiful. If, unconventional. It also spoke of home. Somehow, that mute scenery of impenetrable grey skies against deep gleaming green hills made Cloud feel more comfortable that in the middle of flaring tempests or being bathed in light under a big, blue sky. Somehow, the plainer sight of the heaving tangle of the two sobered hues seemed more natural to him, despite its rather grave effect. It was something he liked, something he saw reflected in himself - something about the gathering greys around the damply-burning greens gave him a promise of home. It wasn't the area, not the settled and languid knolls that cried out home to him but the weather, brilliant and shrouded.  
  
It was good weather for the day he would leave.  
  
He had been settled for two years. It seemed a bit too much to even think, too sacred a step forward to make real by transforming it into simple words. He was leaving Kalm; the area that had been his home for two years, he was leaving his settled shelter, he was leaving the place that had become almost as familiar to him as his own skin, not that he always felt completely familiar in his own skin generally. More than all that, he was leaving Tifa. Tifa, who had always been his faithful and constant best friend.  
  
He had sworn he wouldn't take off like that, he hadn't pegged himself as the type to do extensive soul-searching on the distant reddened horizons. He wasn't a coward and didn't like the notion of running away from things; he was a warrior and his solution was to fight or failing that, to think his way out of an unbecoming situation. He could recall plenty of those. But the problem wasn't with where he was and couldn't be solved by going somewhere else - it wasn't that at all. The problem was inside him, inside his mind and heart things were still undefined, still jumbled, still stopping him from making peace with things and finding himself.  
  
He couldn't see how he could make peace with himself, his life and all aspects of it by running away from it all. He'd been happy settled, despite how restless for adventure he became from time to time, he had found real personal fulfilment in finding himself through domestic life and domestic situations. It had been strange but healthy to return to a long-lost sense of normalcy, to live a life without pressure and worry of having to save the world. Things had been greatly changed after Meteor and certainly it still needed saving, or at least the human race, but he knew that part was not his to play. He hadn't seen how escaping a real chance at normal life and how abandoning the people who loved him dearly and cared about him desperately - especially Tifa - for a few years of solitude could be beneficial. He had fought his battles, tested his trials, grieved, found himself and moved on in a normal and domestic situation with his friends always there for him. It had given him a rich happiness of spirit. It had been wonderful to just be allowed to be himself, whoever that was.  
  
And now he was leaving. Now he had seen that there was only so much of himself he could make sense of surrounded by others. He had felt restless, longing to leave and embark of some adventure, just to remember what it was like. His spirit had been fresh and footloose and now it was straining against its domestic tethers. He had fought against that yearning until he realised something: it was something he wanted to do and in not doing it, he was being untrue to himself.  
  
The leaving had been a brutal step, but it had been needed. He had felt cowardly and cruel but his friends had understood. Tifa even encouraged him, but that quiet, crusading sorrow in her eyes told him that in her heart of hearts, she didn't want him to leave, not even for a short while, but whilst recognising that he had to do it. Something about her reaction told him that perhaps she'd been expecting this for a while.  
  
He pushed those thoughts behind him as he looked ahead to that heavy horizon, so distant and blurred between such fundamentally opposing colours. He gave a small smile, feeling embodied by a sudden sense of confidence in what he was doing, despite having no idea where he was going. Taking all his troubles with him gladly, he took that one trembling step forward, and paced ahead into the unknown. Into what he expected to be an uncertain adventure, an uneasy outcome, teetering dangers and a fleet of unfamiliar faces.  
  
Little did he know that the most important face on his journey would be a very familiar one.  
  
*  
  
How will our heroic pair cross paths? What's happened to the state of the planet since Meteor? Whatever will happen next? Find out in the next thrilling instalment!  
  
* 


End file.
